To interview Charlie Bisharat contact the IMEU at 718-514-9662 or info@imeu.net

Palestinian-American musician Charlie Bisharat

Grammy Award-winning violinist and recording artist Charlie Bisharat was well on his way to a career in medicine when he received a phone call that changed his life. "Those ambitions fizzled," he says when the new age group Shadowfax asked Bisharat to play with them in South America. Bisharat received his degree in Biology at the University of Southern California and then joined the group in 1988. They won a Grammy for Best New Age Performance that year for Folksongs for a Nuclear Village.

Bisharat has performed with Yanni, John Tesh, Elton John, The Rolling Stones and many others. His work can be heard in the soundtracks of dozens of Hollywood films and television series, including Titanic, Swordfish, Austin Powers in Goldmember, The Drew Carey Show and Friends. While Bisharat spends the majority of his time between recording studios such as Warner Brothers and Sony, he also dedicates some of his time to performing with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Philharmonic.

Bisharat was born in Inglewood, California in 1963 to a Palestinian father from Jerusalem and an American mother from Pennsylvania. His father, a surgeon, came to the United States in 1950 to pursue his medical studies. Bisharat picked up the violin for the first time when he was 4 years old and played it as a hobby until he was ten. That's when his mother realized that her son had an exceptional skill. Bisharat humorously refers to this as "the time when my life as a regular kid ended and we started waking up at five in the morning to practice."

Because he grew up playing classical music, Bisharat says that he had a late start with popular music and has "been catching up with it my whole life." He is grateful that his music has taken him across the world to Japan, Europe, and South America where his experience of music expanded beyond classical. In 1998 he published the book "Beyond Classical Violin" (Cherry Lane Music). And today, Bisharat's music covers an array of musical traditions. He has played with the likes of Strunz and Farah in Rio de Colores, an album that blends Latin American and Middle Eastern music, and with Al-Andalus Ensemble where Bisharat's Palestinian heritage comes to life with renowned Moroccan oudist Tarik Banzi. He is currently working with Brazilian artist Oscar Castro-Neves on a new recording, and hopes to someday perform in Palestine.